Leonardo DiCaprio, Real Life Captain Planet, Donated $5 Million To Help Save The Amazon

When it comes to the environment, Leonardo DiCaprio has been putting his money where his mouth is for years. According to CNN, the actor continued to wield the might of his pocketbook in the name of planet Earth, by donating $5 million to help the Amazon rainforest, which continue to be ravaged by wildfires. The money, which is approximately one tenth of what he made for starring in Christopher Nolan’s Inception, was funneled into an emergency fund for the Amazon, which was launched by Leo’s organization Earth Alliance.

DiCaprio has also been raising awareness about the fires on his Instagram, where he’s asking for donations—albeit much smaller in size than his own—to help the efforts currently underway in Brazil. ”The fund was set up to help local partners and the indigenous communities on the front lines protecting the Amazon,” he wrote on Instagram.

He also took time to highlight the efforts of the firefighters who are working around the clock to help stave off the fires. DiCaprio called them “real heroes,” and highlighted the limited resources they have to do their jobs. “In the Amazon they often work with nothing but machetes and leaf blowers and small tanks of fire suppressant,” he wrote before describing a sting in which he visited Brazil and worked alongside them. “It was tough hot and at times hopeless work. Some of them were Guajajara tribesmen who had dedicated their lives to protecting what was left of their ancestral forests - most had already been logged and burned. Some of them had been murdered for trying. It was brutal and tragic and we should all bow down to them for what they do - for so little money that they have to roll cigarettes with writing paper.”